This is a realistic and positive take on the season….
Great Morning Pitt by Chris today
- Thread starter pittmeister
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This is a realistic and positive take on the season….
This board could use a positive take right now. Losing 3 out of 4 to close out the season was disappointing, but this season was miles better than anyone expected. Really proud of what this team has accomplished and found this team to be the most entertaining since the 2009. Still think we are in the field and can make some noise with the right matchups, but it's all gravy from here.
I don't think anyone is down on the Pitt team or this Pitt season. We are down on their NCAAT chances.....but that's mostly due to stupid NET. Had scoring margins not mattered, yesterday would have been "ok that sucked but its Duke, lets get ready for the tournament."
I think the Syracuse game at the Pete was the apex of the season. Maybe they peaked that day. Everything came together that day perfectly. Hated rival, Saturday afternoon game, sell out crowd, senior night, comfortable win, lots of scoring, Fisch shot, end of game celebration. It all came together perfectly that day.
I was most happy to enjoy that day at the Pete with my youngest daughter. She had a great time.
Hail to Pitt!
I was most happy to enjoy that day at the Pete with my youngest daughter. She had a great time.
Hail to Pitt!
You guys know your not supposed to be positive on here....lol. Picked 14th preseason and challenging for 1st place wasn't shabby for a roster that some called atrocious. Get ready for seeing through rose colored glasses and waving blue, gold pom poms comments. H2P
I agree, but I don't know WHY everyone treated that day like such a victory lap when there was clearly work to be done.
Oh well. At the end of the day, you could win the conference by beating a scrub team. Didn't do it. You could guarantee a spot in the tournament by just having a pulse against Duke. Didn't do it. I still think we're in, but it's tough to say we showed up when we didn't really have to do a whole lot to take this season to the next level.
Still a good season either way.
I treated it like a victory lap because it would have taken a miracle for Pitt not to make it. As I said, we needed 1 of 7 games to go our way the last week due to secure a double bye and avoid a bad Wednesday loss. All 7 went the other way. Chances of that happening? 2% 3%???? So we avoided the bad Wednesday loss which was enough to put us in but then the unthinkable happened. No one envisioned a 30 point loss to Duke making it perhaps worse than a Wednesday loss. All we needed was a reasonable loss.
Nobody thought Pitt would lose to ND like they did. They had so many chances to get 1 more win to lock themselves into a bid and have failed. So in that sense it's really disappointing.
Thank God. The #Taeks I've seen on this board this week have been nuts, absolutely bonkers. I appreciate the positivity but mostly the sanity. A few that I've rolled my eyes at:
- This was a bad season. Folks, this was an incredible season. Capel was the coach of year for a reason. This team was in the cellar in every preseason poll. Back in October when it was just the real sickos, we were projecting 6 ACC wins, maybe 8 at best. Perhaps, if the stars aligned and God himself played shooting guard for us, we would win 10 ACC games. But we reeled off 14 wins, 15 if you include GTech. We're better than even odds to play in March Madness for the first time in years. Far too many are letting recent losses cloud the bigger picture -- a team that was left for dead now has life. That's good!
- Hugley has to leave, will leave, should leave, etc. Friends, we've had one winning season (this one) in the last 7 years. Hugley was all-conference just two years ago. And you want to run him off? You think we need an upgrade? I get it, he was on a bad team and got his on a lot of volume, but come on.
- Ditto that Jeffress has to go. Jeffress is a great athlete and potentially elite college defender. He was one of our most highly rated recruits. I'm not saying that he's produced, but the upside is enormous. Again, we have one decent season and people want to run players off because they live in a fantasy world where we're going to put together a roster that's a lock to win 28 games.
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It can be better than expected and disappointing at the same time.
I said not too long ago that anything short of making the NCAAs will be a disappointment and I would honestly rather have seen the team meet preseason expectations and be looking for a new coach, because it meant that the team severely underperformed at the time when it mattered the most. Now here we are, staring at the middle ground I was hoping to avoid.
With the way rosters turn over now, there isn't really any such thing as building for next year. Blowing a chance to make the NCAAs, even if it was a surprise to even be in that position, can't be seen as a "good" season at a place like Pitt.
I said not too long ago that anything short of making the NCAAs will be a disappointment and I would honestly rather have seen the team meet preseason expectations and be looking for a new coach, because it meant that the team severely underperformed at the time when it mattered the most. Now here we are, staring at the middle ground I was hoping to avoid.
With the way rosters turn over now, there isn't really any such thing as building for next year. Blowing a chance to make the NCAAs, even if it was a surprise to even be in that position, can't be seen as a "good" season at a place like Pitt.
I’d be ecstatic if our new baseline is the “middle ground”. Winning conference records and making the NCAAT every two or three years would be a huge improvement over the last 7-8 years.
And there is absolutely a thing as building for next year, even in this environment. JC was able to get really good transfers for this season, even as bad as we were prior. I’m thinking the process of getting transfers/recruits should be much easier after a winning season.
I feel the season was a success and alot of fun to follow but losing to ND and getting blown out by Duke does sting some ,but all and all a very good season
"It can be better than expected and disappointing at the same time."
I agree with this take. As fans we are allowed to have a little nuance with our opinions. Relative to the past several years, this is awesome. Relative to what our ceiling looked like at certain points this season; this is a little disappointing. The good news, I think, is that Pitt can win a game or two in the tourny and turn this back into a great season without a lot of regrets.
I agree with this take. As fans we are allowed to have a little nuance with our opinions. Relative to the past several years, this is awesome. Relative to what our ceiling looked like at certain points this season; this is a little disappointing. The good news, I think, is that Pitt can win a game or two in the tourny and turn this back into a great season without a lot of regrets.
There are about to be 80 P6 schools, plus a couple on the outside of that who play like one (e.g. Gonzaga), minus a couple in the P6 who are there solely for historical reasons or because of football and haven't been regularly competitive in decades (e.g. DePaul and the peds).
There are about 45 tournaments slots for those teams each year.
There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't regularly finish in the top half of those teams every year. I'm not going to say we should fire everyone after the occasional year where we don't clear that low bar, but I don't think we should be ecstatic about mediocrity either.
I agree HCJC brought in good transfers for this year, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they are "really good". Most of them are gone after this year, plus a couple good ones he brought in over the previous couple years. We have a lot to replace, and not a lot of clarity on who those replacements will be. That's one of the reasons why falling short of average in our peer group this year would be a disappointment no matter how terrible we thought they were going to be initially. HCJC is basically going to have to recreate this all over again next year, and I don't know if he has that in him. I hope he does.
All I'm saying is that this year shouldn't be seen as some massive accomplishment because of the dumpster fire the last 6 years have been. This should be the bottom range of acceptable at best for Pitt.
I can be happy it wasn't worse and made me more interested in March basketball than I have been in years while also realizing it's still substandard overall.
Agreed. The way this team plays (jacking up low percentage shots too often, complete apathy at times on defense, and general issues with basketball fundamentals on a regular basis) drives me nuts, but I also know they can get hot and beat almost anyone. Unlike the middling Pitt tournament teams of the past 20 years, this one has a very high ceiling to go with the very low floor we saw yesterday.
If they get into March Madness, I'm more excited to see what they can do than any Pitt team in a long time. They'll be playing with house money at that point and could definitely go on a run.
Because Boehiem ran his mouth
That game got circled immediately from casual fans to ESPN to the Zoo….
That’s why.
It went way beyond that. Lots of Pitt alum there, etc. I mean, obviously it was the last home game... but it had way too much of a "thanks or the memories" flavor than a sending off, pep rally type of feel.
